26/12/2024
This last week did not go the way we expected. We did everything right, our girl Zo did everything right, everything was going smoothly, we even kept our expectations low so as to not get too excited about a bigger litter. To our surprise, the puppy count xray made us very optimistic with 6 puppies. We really started to look forward to the days to come when Zo would whelp this relatively good size litter. Things were looking up.
The day came and went for her delivery date but not unusually long after Zo started active labour. After far too long we still didn't see a pup so I decided to head into the vet. The tech had the first one on the ground after only a few minutes and he was a monster! He was blocking the canal for the other but at the end we had 4 healthy puppies and 1 still born. We were happy with that.
Within 24 hrs we knew something was off with our girl. She wasn't eating or drinking and was generally off. Shortly after the nightmare started. We lost the first puppy after a long night of tube feeding. The next day another started to fade and no amount of intervention could get him back. Our vet even put him on antibiotics just in case but it was too late. I immediately started giving the other two pups the antibiotics. Enough was enough so we headed to emerg with Zoe and the two remaining pups. The attending vet did some scans and found an abnormal amount of inflammation in her uterus. Both pups seemed to be doing okay at the time but still not wanting to feed off certain ni***es and taking a long time to feed.
The next day we headed into the repro vet where she whelped and found Zo had an infection in her uterus that was likely there when she whelped. There's a chance the puppies caught it in the whom or they were getting it through her milk. The way they would feed off only certain ni***es leads me to believe that was the case but it's only speculation.
We are on the other side of it at this point but with only two puppies left. Zoe is doing much better, eating better and the pups are growing like weeds.You can say it was a hell of a roller coaster ride and not in a good way. It's certainly not easy breeding dogs but man, we cannot get a break.
